Latest News

Associate Professor Anujit Chakraborty released a new NBER working paper, Learning About Outgroups: The Impact of Broad Versus Deep Interactions, with coauthors Arkadev Ghosh, Matt Lowe and Gareth Nellis. In a factory the researchers set up in India, Hindu and Muslim men worked either in brief interactions with many members of the other group or in a longer pairing with one; the longer pairings built ties with that partner, but only the broad contact reduced the majority group's misperceptions about outgroup strangers. Neither kind of contact changed behavior toward the wider outgroup.

Professor David Rapson co-edited, with Lynne Kiesling, a special issue of The Energy Journal that translates economic research into practical guidance for electricity regulators. The six articles cover topics from regulated monopoly structure and grid reliability to the environmental value of renewable energy and energy justice.

Associate Professor Santiago Pérez will be an associate editor at the Journal of Labor Economics starting August 1st of 2026. 

Janine Wilson and Katherine Eriksson have just returned from South Africa, where they led the department's inaugural faculty-led study abroad program. Over three weeks, they taught Economic Development to 21 students in the context of the South African experience, based at Stellenbosch University. Students met with local leaders and organizations and spent time in Cape Town, with a safari rounding out the trip. 

Professor Marianne Page gave two keynote-level lectures this spring. In April she delivered the Reid Elliott Lecture at the University of Victoria, speaking on "Sources of Generational Persistence in the Effects of Early-Life Health Interventions." In June she was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Canadian Economics Association.
 

Giovanni was an invited speaker at the 2026 ECB Forum on Central Banking, held June 29 – July 1 in Sintra, Portugal — the European counterpart to Jackson Hole. He presented "The immigration impact on population, labor productivity, investments and TFP in OECD countries," coauthored with Gaetano Basso (Banca d'Italia) and Mitali Mathur (UC Davis), as the featured paper in the session on migration and European productivity. The session was chaired by ECB Vice-President Boris Vujčić, with Hillel Rapoport (Paris School of Economics) as discussant.

Professor Marianne Page and Professor Giovanni Peri appeared on the Mind over Matters podcast.

Professor Page's participation:

https://youtu.be/HXT7lCeyXAc

Professor Peri's participation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC2hASkuIp8

Chris Meissner appeared on the Macro Musings podcast recently discussing his book “One from the Many: The Global Economy since 1850”.

https://www.mercatus.org/macro-musings/chris-meissner-history-globalization

Professor Chris Meissner will be the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions 2026-2027 at Cambridge University. Previous holders of this prestigious chair include Nobel laureates such as Douglass C North and Robert Fogel as well as many other leading economic historians and historians from the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitt_Professor_of_American_History_and_Institutions

Professor of Teaching Economics and Undergraduate Program Chair Janine Wilson cited in the Atlantic for her expertise on STEM preparatory education.

Professor of Economics and Department Chair Marianne Bitler was quoted on an article about SNAP, the federal food assistance program.

Three graduate students in the economics department (Tatiana Hiller, Francisco Pizzi, and Maria Ines Badín) have been named National Tax Association (NTA) fellows. They have received funding to present their research at the NTA annual conference in Boston in November, and their photos and bios have been posted to the NTA website.

Professor of Economics Òscar Jordà has been appointed as Fellow of the Econometric Society. Election as a Fellow of the Econometric Society is a recognition of important scientific contributions to Economics.

Professor of Economics and Department Chair Marianne Bitler was a coauthor on a recently released report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The report ("Pathways to Reduce Child Poverty") provides a comprehensive assessment of the temporary tax credit expansions’ impacts as well as alternative policy options to reduce child poverty.

Associate Professor of Economics Ina Simonovska has been appointed to the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors for the State of California. Ina Simonovska is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has research interests in International Trade, Macro and Finance.